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Just My Boy chronicles a mother's joys & challenges As she raises her transgender son

When he shared that he desperately wanted to pee standing up, I thought, “I can make that happen.” I had no idea how, but years of pulling together weird crafts and costumes with a bunch of junk and a hot glue gun had given me the hubris to believe there was nothing I couldn’t construct.

I’d never thought far enough ahead to see that this tween boy of mine was going to need more than emotional and medical support through his transition; it was going to be up to me to help him understand what it means to be a man.

The evidence indicated that puberty blockers were our best bet. But we had an uneasiness that we couldn’t quite name; something to do with getting on Mother Nature’s shit list for attempting to derail her plans for our child.

“These are the ones I want,” G. said. She’d wandered to the other side of the underwear rack while I was frantically searching through packs of panties trying to find ones that didn’t involve sparkles or My Little Pony and had come back bearing a pack of Minions briefs. From the boys’ section.

G. told us that a group of girls had shoved her into a stall in the girls' room and held the door closed. "They yelled, ‘You can’t be in here! You’re a boy!’” She looked at me. "They're right, you know. I am a boy. And I want to use the boys' bathroom."

Her desire to be called by another name was limited to her imaginary games or her literary identity until she was nine. Then she got an old fashioned pilot’s cap. Now she wanted to be called Pilot. In real life.

I sometimes think I'm an expert on being the mom of a transgender kid. The truth is that rarely a month goes by that I'm not blindsided when something completely unexpected threatens to throw him into a tailspin of frustration and despair.

Moisturizing sunscreen, for example.

Elle White is a writer and the mother of a pre-teen trans boy. She's figuring it out one story at a time.